Just a warning, the holidays are rapidly approaching. It’s time, once again, to think about what to buy all the space nerds on your lists. Here’s what we like.

Show Notes

Binoculars
Telescopes
Games reccommendation
Board Games
Books

Transcript

(This is an automatically generated transcript)

Frasier Cain [00:01:50] Astronomy cast. Episode 699. Our holiday gift guide. Welcome. Just trying to be cast for a weekly, fact based journey through the cosmos where we help you understand not only what we know, but how we know what we know. I’m Fraser Cain, I’m the publisher of Universe Today. With me, as always, is Doctor Pamela Gay, a senior scientist for the Planetary Science Institute and the director of Cosmic Quest. Hey, panel, how you doing?

Pamela Gay [00:02:10] I’m doing well, but I have to admit, I am not emotionally prepared for this episode. My Halloween decorations are still in the yard. I have not done my grocery shopping. It is still September in my head, right? Good lord. How did we get here?

Frasier Cain [00:02:31] Yeah, yeah. I mean, one time marches inexorably on. Also, you know, we are getting ahead of, you know, we were recording this show. It won’t show up for another week. That’ll be like just after your Thanksgiving. And I feel like after you finish your Thanksgiving, that is the moment where in your mind, Christmas and the holiday season starts to loom large. So I think the timing is off. Yeah.

Pamela Gay [00:02:56] Yeah. Saturday is making tamales out of leftovers and putting up Christmas decorations.

Frasier Cain [00:03:02] That sounds good. Now I need to warn people I’m not in my typical studio. I’m on the road. I’m recording with less wonderful recording equipment, so. But hopefully it still sounds okay.

Pamela Gay [00:03:13] You still say.

Frasier Cain [00:03:14] Good? Yeah. And it’ll be. I’m using a cool gadget. I’m using a DGI, microphone system, and I. I really like it, actually. Very simple. And I’ll be here for the next four weeks, so just I apologize in advance. But this is going to be my reality right now. Hopefully it’s not too bad. So just a warning. The holidays are rapidly approaching. It’s time once again to think about what to buy all the space nerds on your list. Here’s what we like. All right, we do this every year, but, like, things always remain the same as well. So do we want to talk about the things that will always remain the same, or we won’t talk about the things that are new that we like.

Pamela Gay [00:03:57] So I, I decided to add things like board games this year. And there are a bunch of new books, not all of which I have read, but many of which are on the list today because I want someone to buy them for me.

Frasier Cain [00:04:15] Oh, right. Wait a minute. Is that what today is? Today is a holiday list for Pamela.

Pamela Gay [00:04:22] Well, at least with with a couple of the very few, very few things, but. Okay. Does it happen?

Frasier Cain [00:04:29] Yeah. All right. Well, let’s let’s just start. I mean, where do you want to go for games? You want to start with, with, books. Movies? Gear.

Pamela Gay [00:04:39] Let’s do fourth gear, because let’s just get that out of the way and, and go through what we need to.

Frasier Cain [00:04:46] Okay? So if you have a person in your life that is wanting to get into astronomy. What do we always recommend as the first piece of reasonably inexpensive kit that you should acquire.

Pamela Gay [00:05:04] But not you learn spar killers?

Frasier Cain [00:05:07] Yeah. Why? Do you have any opinion? I guess there’s like three classes of this, right? There’s, like, nice small traveling binoculars. Yeah, good astronomical binoculars. And then there is the Cadillac of binoculars. So, so we’ll start with the traveling ones. You know, like, any binoculars work great. You want know binoculars. And you’re looking for those two numbers eight times 35, seven times 35.

Pamela Gay [00:05:41] And by 50.

Frasier Cain [00:05:42] Ten by 50. Ideally, maximize the second number. And don’t be so concerned about the first number. The first number is the magnification. So it’s like seven times it’s eight times it’s ten times. Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter. The second number though is the size of the eyepiece in or the size of the aperture in millimeters.

Pamela Gay [00:06:05] Light gathering.

Frasier Cain [00:06:07] And that’s the amount of light that is getting gathered. The more light that you gather, the fainter the object you’re going to be able to see. You want that number to be bigger. So but they’re all kind of the same. So eight by seven by 30 fives, eight by 50, ten by 50. Whatever is like a nice size and small. Yeah.

Pamela Gay [00:06:26] Yeah. What I usually look for is a field of view. That’s a couple of degrees because that makes star hopping super easy. And then maximize the, the, size of the front end as big as I can afford. First, don’t buy something you can’t afford. And second, as big as I can hold steady with my hands right there. There are times when it’s amazing to have giant binoculars that require a tripod, or require you to be laying down, and like, balancing them with your elbows on the ground. But most of the time, you just want something that you can carry out into your backyard and just look up while in a hammock.

Frasier Cain [00:07:14] And you shouldn’t be spending more than 50 bucks for this. Like they’re reasonably inexpensive. But if you want to spend more on a pair of binoculars and you do want that one, that’s going to give you a better view, then you want to go to the astronomical binoculars. And those will have numbers like 25 times 75, 15 by 75 or 25 times by 100. And so 100 millimeter, 75 millimeter lenses with higher magnification. And they’re amazing. Like they’re. Yes. You fall into the sky. It’s the power is incredible. But they’re heavy.

Pamela Gay [00:07:51] Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s a it’s a good way to figure out whether or not you have small muscle trembles and build up your, ability to rate things in that like bucket at arm’s length challenge. That’s what giant binoculars are.

Frasier Cain [00:08:07] And if you are willing, you know, if you’ve got like a nice spot that you can sit layback and you’ve got some, some tripod that can hold them, but they come with a tripod holder often or you know, they have a tripod mount. Yeah, put on a tripod and then yeah use them and you don’t have to hold them and jiggle them. But the Cadillac of these are the image stabilizing binoculars.

Pamela Gay [00:08:30] Yes. These you’re you’re looking sometimes upwards of $1,000. But the nice thing about them is some of the fanciest ones can even snap images inside of their electronics, which is kind of wild. Whoa. But yeah. Yeah, but you can. You can be in a windy circumstance. You can be on a boat. They tolerate all sorts of weird environmental issues and just regular everyday my hands shake. No big deal. And allow your eyes to just take in those photons and show you the nebulae.

Frasier Cain [00:09:13] And, I mean, we’re a lot more experienced with this kind of thing. Like when you, when you take video with your iPhone or, you know, or you’ve got like a nice little dSLR, it’s got some kind of image stabilization built in. That’s what it’s like. You are. Yeah. You are looking at the sky and then you press the image stabilization button and then the sky just it turns into a photograph in your vision and not but you know, things can be happening. But it is rock solid. And that makes everything. And it’s hard to undersell how wonderful that kind of thing is. But these are expensive. I mean, you’re looking at upwards of a thousand bucks for a pair of image stabilizing binoculars. Even bigger ones can be mo...